T20 World Cup 2021: "India need to play for the fans" - Salman Butt on how Men in Blue can motivate themselves

Former Pakistan captain Salman Butt has opined the Indian cricket team owes it to their legion of fans to put up good performances in their remaining three matches of the T20 World Cup 2021.

India have gone down to Pakistan and New Zealand by 10 and eight wickets respectively in their first two matches of the Super 12 round. The defeats have left their chances of qualifying for the semi-finals in jeopardy.

Speaking on his YouTube channel, Butt asserted that India have a lot to play for in their remaining matches of the T20 World Cup 2021 as they have a point to prove. He explained:

"India are representing their country and they need to win it for their nation and their pride. They have some big stars of world cricket. They had bad days and now they need to come up with good performances. Just because they had a couple of poor games, it doesn’t make them a bad team. And they can prove that by winning again."

Butt added that Indian fans too would be looking forward to a much better performance from their side against Afghanistan. He added:

"Afghanistan is a quick-growing cricketing nation and have been giving a tough fight to other sides. India have to be at their best and try to win by a big margin. The team has a huge fan-following, so India need to play for the fans. If they win the next three games comprehensively, they will send across a strong message, that they may have lost a couple of games but are not a bad side."

If India manage to win their remaining three games by huge margins and the other results go their way, they could still gain a backdoor entry into the semi-finals.

"India got their basics wrong" - Salman Butt points out issues with team’s selection

While many have pointed fingers at the IPL as one of the causes of India’s poor performance, Butt reckons that India erred in their team selection itself. According to him, India did not get the fundamentals right.

He elaborated:

"India got their basics wrong. They ignored genuine pace (in the bowling department). Also, their mystery spinner (Varun Chakravarthy) is being preferred over a specialist spinner (R Ashwin). Apart from Top 3, the other two batters (Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan) are completely new. The bubble life also had an impact as they haven’t been able to regroup."

The Indian players were part of IPL 2021 in the UAE. The T20 league ended on October 15 while the T20 World Cup began on October 17. India played their first Super 12 match against Pakistan on October 24 in Dubai.